Music of Nature Podcast

Recorded February 15-16, 2021 at Wolf Mountain Nature Center near Smyrna, New York. © Lang Elliott. I recorded throughout the night and this is a compilation of my best cuts of howling wolves, carefully sequenced for your listening pleasure. A gentle wintertime gurgling brook ambience has been added. Note: These are not wild wolves—they are the result of captive breeding programs at various locations across the continent. Wolf Mountain Nature Center is a registered 501c3 non-profit. The wolves are lovingly cared for by Wil Pryor (the Director) and the staff.

Wet Gloppy Snowfall. Recorded February 2, 2016, 10am. Connecticut Hill Wildlife Management Area, near Ithaca, New York. © Lang Elliott. It is early February in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. What begins as an idyllic snowstorm, with large, delicate snowflakes falling slowly and gently to the ground, quickly transforms as the temperature rises to well above freezing. The snowflakes begin melting before they hit the ground, turning into wet globs that splatter and smack as they strike the leaf litter. Such a unique, energetic soundscape, lying halfway between snowfall and rain! A Note from Lang: As always, recording rain is a challenge. In this case, I used my homemade rain setup, which consists of an open, cuboid frame wrapped in speaker cloth, with a thick layer of absorbent filters set on top. The goal, of course, was to record only the sounds made by the wet snow striking the leaf litter, while avoiding any sounds caused by melting snow hitting the mic frame itself or the absorbent filters above.

Beaver Moans and Cave Drip - 5min 24sec May 10, 2024, 11pm. Round Spring State Park, north of Eminence, Missouri. Recorded by Lang Elliott. In the Ozark region of southern Missouri, Round Spring wells up into a large sinkhole, surrounded by steep forested slopes on all sides. The water is a vivid blue and flows out through a cavelike passageway at one end, emerging about a hundred feet away to form the headwaters of a large creek that meanders a short distance before flowing into the Current River. With some effort, I am able to place my soundscape microphone a few feet into the cave, where drips from the ceiling and walls make resounding plops, plinks, and snaps as they strike water and stones below. I record the dripping sounds for several hours (see “Cave Drip” track). Then, at 11pm, something unexpected happens. I start hearing the mournful moans and whines, and later the chewing sounds, of two American Beaver. What a delight! Earlier in the day, I had seen beaver swimming in the creek below. with one heading upstream and disappearing into the cavern. Apparently, the beaver have a den inside the cave, or at least a bed of tree stems and small limbs from which they feed. A Note from Lang: Round Spring is a circular pool about a hundred feet across and 55 feet deep. The water flow is enormous—about 26 million gallons per day! The cavelike passageway is nearly twenty feet wide, but only two feet high at the entrance.

Gator Song - May 19, 2019, 1am. Anhinga Trail, Everglades National Park, Florida. Recorded by Lang Elliott. This is a binaural soundscape. Please listen with headphones for a spacious, immersive experience. In the middle of the night, along the Anhinga Trail boardwalk in the Everglades, I hear the gentle purring of crickets, a distant chorus of frogs, random splashes and pops, and chuck-will’s-widows chanting their night-songs. Then, quite suddenly, a surprise—I hear, and even feel, a sonorous, drawn-out growl, coming from nearby. It’s the unmistakable low-pitched mating bellow of a male alligator. Almost instantly, another joins in, and then another. The bellowing is clearly contagious. And then a male growls loudly from directly below me—he’s right under the boardwalk, no more than a foot or two from my feet! The bellowing continues for several more minutes, and then, just as suddenly, the alligators fall silent. Once again, all I hear are the songs of the crickets and frogs. NOTE: This recording has some very loud super low frequency content that will knock-your-socks-off if your headphones or speakers allow you to hear it.

Forest birds singing during mid-morning in the Sunklands area in the Ozark Mountain region of southern Missouri. Listen for the prominent wood thrush, plus carolina wren and yellow-throated warbler. Recorded 15 May 2021.

Dawn Chorus recorded at Chaparral Wildlife Management Area in south Texas, near Artesia Wells. 20 May 2005.

Dawn chorus at edge of a beaver pond in Shindagin Hollow, near Brooktondale NY. Listen for green frogs, bullfrogs and a variety of bird songs including: red-winged blackbird, wood thrush and mourning dove. Recorded 30 May 2013. Please listen with headphones.

A spirited dawn chorus along a marsh edge at Seney National Wildlife Refuge in the upper peninsula region of Michigan. Listen for mink frogs, green frogs, common snipe, american bittern, red-winged blackbird and much more. Recorded 8 June, 2004.

Varied Thrushes singing along a forest trail near Ozette Lake in the Olympic National Park. Listen also for a Swainson's Thrush and Winter Wren, along with the gentle gurgle of a nearby stream. 2 August 2021. Please Listen with headphones.

Magical Dawn Chorus at Spring Pond Bog in the Adirondack Mountains near Tupper Lake, NY. 12 June 2000. Listen for Swainson's Thrush, Hermit Thrush, White-throated Sparrow, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher and more. Binaural; please listen with headphones. © Lang Elliott, musicofnature.com

A pleasing dawn chorus recorded at Connecticut Hill Wildlife Management Area near Ithaca, NY. 21 May, 2016. Binaural - Please listen with headphones. Prominent singers include Eastern Wood-Pewee, Mourning Dove, Wood Thrush, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and Ovenbird. © Lang Elliott, musicofnature.com

Birds at dawn. Connecticut Hill Wildlife Management Area near Ithaca, New York. © Lang Elliott, musicofnature.com

A soothing binaural ambient recording featuring forest drip at dawn with Wood Thrushes singing from all directions and crickets trilling. Listen also for several hoots from a Barred Owl. How nice to hear so many Wood Thrushes singing together in a chorus, especially given that populations have been steadily declining over the last fifty years. Recorded 23 June 2024 in Mammoth Cave National Park. © Lang Elliott, Music of Nature. Please listen with headphones.

A 19-minute binaural nature podcast describing my "nature sound adventure" at Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky, in mid-October 2019. For an immersive 3D listening experience, please use headphones! © Lang Elliott, musicofnature.com

A fully binaural 30-minute podcast featuring 23 nature soundscapes from the Yasuni National Park region in Ecuador's lowland rainforest (at the wonderful Sani Lodge). All recordings were gathered during the first week of November, 2018. Please use headphones for a fully immersive listening experience! In this nature sound experience, I share my rainforest recording adventure, condensing nearly six days of field work into a reconstruction of a typical day of observing and listening. The soundscapes that are featured can indeed be experienced in a day. Not so with recording ... it's far easier to listen than to actually capture the soundscapes. That said, I am quite happy with what I managed to get, although I sure wish I could have stayed for another few days. As an aside, the guides at Sani Lodge, all indigenous, were terrific. Not only did they know the sounds of virtually everything, they were also wonderful imitators, quite often singing back to the birds, for the sheer joy of it. © 2018 Lang Elliott, musicofnature.com. All Rights Reserved.

This binaural podcast features recordings I made during the month of May in 2018, at the height of spring near my home in upstate New York. Please join me on this nature sound adventure, and be sure to listen using headphones for a fully spacious experience. This is the first in a series of two or three podcasts wherein I will share my best recordings from 2018. Because of project deadlines that kept me glued to my computer, I did not get out much this season. But that will change next year, when I plan to head to Florida in early spring and then follow spring north, perhaps all the way to the Gaspé!

Delayed Spring — A Binaural Podcast by Lang Elliott The great warbler migration is upon us here in Ithaca, on this fine warm day of May 3rd. But the ten days between my last blog post and today were not the greatest, weather-wise or bird-wise, with lots of cold days, freezing nights, rain and wind. It even snowed one afternoon! Nonetheless, I gathered recordings of 21 species on four different days and I've put together this new podcast ... Delayed Spring ... to celebrate what I found. About twenty minutes long, the podcast features quite a number of deliciously spacious binaural soundscape recordings. So, if you listen with headphones or earbuds, you may very well think you're out in nature with me, fully immersed in the 3D sound environment. Note that I've made a special effort to include long intervals where you just hear the sounds of nature, rather than me gabbing about it all. What follows is a list of the 21 species featured, roughly in the order in which they are presented in my podcast: Wood Frog, Spring Peeper, Blue Jay, Whie-throated Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, Black-capped Chickadee, Dark-eyed Junco, Louisiana Waterthrush, Hermit Thrush, Eastern Phoebe, Blue-headed Vireo, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Belted Kingfisher, Mallard, Yellow-rumped Warbler (I think), Eastern Towhee, Field Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Mockingbird, and American Toad. I hope you enjoy the show!

An impromptu podcast featuring nature recordings I made in my backyard on April 22, 2018. I used a Telinga stereo parabola. The Story: I got up early on Sunday (April 22) to see how many birds I could record with my trusty parabolic microphone. I was expecting perhaps a dozen or so, given the difficulty of getting decent recordings. As it turns out, I ended up recording a whopping 26 species … 24 birds, 1 frog and 1 mammal, all found in my own backyard (I never left our property). Luckily, we have a number of habitats, which helps for sure, including: a pond with some cattails, grassy meadows, lots of shrubby edges, an overgrown field, and forest. Returning to my studio the next day, I set about editing the recordings and throwing together a narrative, which I performed off-the-cuff, without writing down any script. I rather like the result … uncomplicated, straightforward, and without too much talking. I was lucky to have gotten so many recordings, which makes for a compelling little bird walk, so suitable for celebrating the dawn chorus on an early spring day.

"Meltwater Melodies" is an 11-minute long binaural podcast by Lang Elliott. Please use headphones for a superb 3D listening Experience. In this podcast, I share my recording adventures while visiting the Three Sisters Wilderness Area in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon during the summer of 2017.

"Desert Sojourn" is a 25-minute podcast featuring binaural nature recordings that I gathered in Organ Pipe National Monument (southern Arizona) in late March of 2017. Please listen using headphones or earbuds for optimal immersive effect. Featured species include: Elf Owl, Great Horned Owl, Western Screech-Owl, Common Poorwill, Greater Roadrunner, Gambel's Quail, Gila Woodpecker, Cactus Wren, Ash-throated Flycatcher, Northern Mockingbird, Curve-billed Thrasher, Scott's Oriole, Black-throated Sparrow, Canyon Towhee, House Finch, Windblown Cactus, Bee Buzz, Crickets, and more!